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I thought I would use today’s blog to have some lighthearted fun to send us into the long weekend. I’m highlighting my favorite animal videos and stories that I’ve found around the web. They’re not long enough to warrant entire posts like the times I’ve talked about dog and capybara best friends or countries-crossing cats, but altogether they’ll make for an amusing way to start off the weekend early.
The first video I want to share—my absolute favorite animal video online—features two adorable otters. They might be good friends or maybe they’re sweethearts, but they spend the majority of the video clasping each other’s paws as they float around their pool.
The high-pitched sounds I made watching this video for the first time probably matched those that sea otters hear from other ocean animals in their native habitat. You can watch the video, which was recorded at the Vancouver Aquarium, on YouTube here.
Two of my other favorite stories come courtesy of BBC News. First I want to mention an older story because although it’s so neat I want to share it, it has a sadder ending. In 2003 BBC News profiled Rusik, a crime-fighting cat. Rusik was a stray who wandered into a Russian police checkpoint along the Caspian Sea one day.
The checkpoint was there to search for cars smuggling sturgeon out of the sea. Around 95% of the world’s caviar comes from the Caspian Sea, and as such the sturgeon has been pushed to the brink of extinction. The checkpoint monitors illegal smuggling of the fish.
Officials at the checkpoint already had specially-trained sturgeon-sniffing dogs, but Rusik soon put the poor hounds out of business. He was just a stray on whom the police stationed at the office took pity, and whom they fed with morsels of confiscated fish.
Rusik developed such a taste for the fish that he soon became the station’s most effective sturgeon-sniffer; illegal sturgeon trade plummeted after Rusik took up the duty. No matter how cleverly the fish was hidden, Rusik always found it.
Then one day as Rusik went about his job, he was hit by a car in which he’d found sturgeon a while before. Rusik didn’t survive the accident. Russian police, in the course of their investigation, deemed the “accident” a possible contract killing.
I feel so sad when I think of the circumstances of Rusik’s demise, but I also think he’s one of the coolest cats of which I’ve ever heard. He became such a threat to a smuggling ring that he’s possibly the first cat ever to have had a “hit” put out on him.
My final story and video will return today’s post to its earlier fluffier mood. We’ve all seen birds get into stores from time to time, sometimes even nesting in the rafters of larger establishments. But a little grocery store in the Scottish city of Aberdeen has a new mascot, a robin that snuck into the store and now makes popular daily visits.
The robin first sought refuge in the store in November during a period of heavy snow, but upon receiving an even warmer welcome than he expected the bird, now nicknamed Robbie, returns for a few hours every day.
Robbie sits and sings by the checkout counter to the delight of both the store’s staff and customers, and sometimes he even receives a few crumbs as thanks for the cheerfulness he brings to the mornings. Robbie’s full story, along with video of his grocery store antics, can be found here.
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*(This image by pavelrybin is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
